*The following is an adaptation from the foreword by K. Scott Oliphint to Cornelius Van Til’s A Christian Theory of Knowledge (WSP 2023).
Mystery, as Bavinck reminds us, is at the root of all Christian theology.[1] When we affirm the ontological Trinity, the incarnation, the covenant of God with man, etc., we are articulating the truth of the matter, according to Scripture, but we also affirm that our minds are not able to put the truth of the matter together in a way that is completely amenable to our usual ways of thinking. Perhaps the best word to denote a teaching that requires that we affirm that which cannot be delimited by our laws of thought is “hyperdox,” i.e., a teaching of Scripture that must be affirmed though it does not conform to, but rather transcends, standard rules of thought.[2] That is, these are teachings (dox) that are above (hyper) our typical (and proper) ways of thinking.
Van Til refers to these teachings as “apparent contradictions.”[3] By that, he does not mean that they are explicit and obvious violations of the law of non-contradiction or some other canon of formal logic. That is, we do not affirm, for example, that God’s attitude toward all men is gracious in the same way that God’s attitude toward all men is not gracious. Similarly, to use another example, with respect to God’s triunity, we do not affirm that God is three in the same way that he is one. Nor do we affirm that Christ is God in the same way that he is man. There are deep and abiding issues in these truths of compatibility, but incompatibilities are not, per se, contradictions.
Van Til’s notion of “apparent contradiction” is shorthand for recognizing that what we do affirm with respect to (much of) biblical teaching is that we are not able completely to subsume such teaching under our standard laws of thought.
Van Til’s notion of “apparent contradiction” is shorthand for recognizing that what we do affirm with respect to (much of) biblical teaching is that we are not able completely to subsume such teaching under our standard laws of thought. Our laws of thinking are not able exhaustively to demarcate the meaning of what we affirm to be true in Scripture. The problem is not, we should note, with our standard ways of thinking. God has created us so that, typically, when we affirm something to be true we are not meant, at the same time and in the same way, to deny its truth. He has created us so that we distinguish one thing from another (i.e., diversity). He has created us to see and affirm the myriad relationships of differing things (i.e., unity) that is replete through the entirety of creation and of our experiences. This is all a part of “thinking God’s thoughts after him.”
The issue with respect to “hyperdoxes,” then, is that an understanding of the character of God and his activity in the world will always transcend the typical ways we are meant to understand and know the world. More importantly, it is the mystery of biblical teaching, the hyperdoxes given to us in Scripture, that should form the foundation and basis for our typical ways of thinking. That is, it is not as though we’re meant to apply our laws of thinking as far as we possibly can and then, in the end, to refer the remainder to mystery. Rather, we begin with mystery because we begin with the triune God himself. In that way, at minimum, we recognize our typical ways of thinking themselves to be limited, to be in need of their own foundation, and to have their own God-given boundaries.
The issue with respect to “hyperdoxes,” then, is that an understanding of the character of God and his activity in the world will always transcend the typical ways we are meant to understand and know the world.
Another important aspect to this notion of “limiting concepts” is that, unlike dialectical thinking, which posits contradictory or incommensurable notions without the possibility of any resolution, the limiting concepts posited, because they are biblical and thus are integral to a Reformed theological system, depend on and interpret each other. Given that they have their ultimate resolution in the mind of God, it is incumbent on the Christian to see each “side” of the two as properly modifying, explaining, and elaborating the other “side.” In this way, we affirm their ultimate unity, even if that unity is beyond our ability comprehensively to articulate.